


Ship's Summer

by falsteloj



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, British Comedy, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Holography, IN SPACE!, M/M, Outer Space, Romance, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Summer, Summer Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 19:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1829206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsteloj/pseuds/falsteloj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rimmer gets what he's always wanted. But it's Rimmer, so of course it isn't that simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ship's Summer

The siren was sounding, the blue light flashing - there had been no time to change the bulb. They were done for this time. There was no way out, the energy surge had been too much for Starbug’s outdated hardware, and the ship itself was being tossed from side to side, like a ping pong ball.

Kryten was in panic mode, and even the Cat had given up wailing about what the movement was doing to the state of his hairdo.

“This is our last chance,” Lister said, face grim as his grip tightened on the controls, and then - then something threw him clear across the room and everything went black.

* * *

Rimmer opened his eyes tentatively, afraid of what he might see. Of what he might not see. His limbs felt strange, heavy, and there was a hideous caterwauling in his ear that was making his simulated stomach churn queasily.

What he saw was Lister, or Lister’s legs to be more precise, clad in JMC regulation beige, jiggling in time to the sound of the Rastabilly Skank ‘masterpiece’ _Skank with Me_.

 _Skank it like you mean it, Skank the night away with me_ , the voice warbled, even as Lister finished cleaning his teeth and spat into sink, the better to say to him,

“Come on, Rimmer. You’re going to be late for shift.”

“What time is it?” Rimmer asked. His voice sounded strange, scratchy. “Where are the others?” Cat. Kryten. The impact. He sat up in a rush - it made his head spin.

“In the training room in,” Lister glanced at his watch calmly, “12 minutes. Come on.”

He threw a bundle at Rimmer that turned out to be his uniform. Not a hologrammatic simulation, but his actual uniform. The uniform he had worn when he was alive. It hit him then that this wasn’t Starbug. He was back in his bunk on Red Dwarf - the original Red Dwarf; no other ship had ever made such copious use of grey, Rimmer was sure of it - looking up at his star chart and his astro-navigation revision timetable.

He patted his head, relieved at the lack of stupid wig. He wasn’t here as Ace at least.

“I don’t understand,” Rimmer whispered.

“If you don’t move this instant I’m going to put you on report.”

Rimmer looked at Lister in horror. He was dead, he thought, for good this time. And this was hell. It had to be if Lister was in charge. Lister only burst into laughter, stamping his foot into his boot without bothering with the laces.

Another voice Rimmer recognised, even after all these years, as the idiot JMC breakfast DJ, filled the silence with, “To celebrate the first day of ship’s summer we’ll be back with more Rastabilly Skank after these important messages.”

He really was in hell.

* * *

He had been wrong on one score at least, their roles hadn’t been reversed. He still had his second technician patch, and his lovingly polished shift supervisor badge. His clipboard was on the bunk room table, with a ream of carefully typed action sheets dated 1st of Geldof. It couldn’t be time travel, he determined. The dates were all out.

Lister, oblivious to his swirling confusion bopped his way down to the training room, the headphones around his neck tinnily broadcasting ‘skank, skank, skank’ into the bustling corridor.

 _Bustling_.

It was mind blowing. Faces he hadn’t seen in over 3 million years. Faces he hadn’t wanted to see, he told himself. And it really was the first day of ship’s summer. The temperature was up, short sleeved shirts flashing expanses of forearm everywhere he looked. Even the advertising boards had shifted from chapsticks and electric blankets to fake tan and sunglasses.

Summer had always been Rimmer’s least favourite time of year, excluding Christmas. Back on Io it had meant six weeks of being measured up to his brothers and found wanting, six weeks of near starvation and constant bullying. Later, when he was supposed to have his own life, it meant watching other people have fun. Listening to talk of shore leave, lunch dates in the tanning booths, and picnics in the botanical gardens.

Nobody had ever asked him on a picnic.

But now he found himself revelling in it. Starbug was always cold. Or perhaps it was more true to say that he was always cold on Starbug, Lister never seemed to have much of a problem. It was doubtless something to do with his hardlight drive. Legion had been a sadistic bastard.

When they reached the small room he had been assigned to hand out his shift rotas and attempt to install some sense of discipline in, he was confronted with yet more faces he had never thought to see again. These were his men, his crew. Zed shift. It was too surreal.

He passed out the action sheets, and carried out the uniform inspection. It was so easy to fall back into the role, to the point where he was on the verge of delivering his usual pep talk before he finally noticed his reflection in the perspex topped table. He rubbed at his bare forehead, heart hammering. _Hammering_. He put his right hand to his left wrist and concentrated, tried to force his fingers to breach his projection, succeeding only in making his wrist ache.

If the others noticed anything unusual, the level of disinterested chatter didn’t alter any, even as the buzzer went to signal the beginning of the shift and they slowly started filing from the room.

“You alright, man?” Lister asked, trailing behind the others to wait for him. “You don’t look so good.”

He was back on Red Dwarf.

He wasn’t a hologram.

The accident had never happened. It had all been a nightmare, a figment of his imagination. He grinned, uncaring of how the expression made him look like a crazed traffic warden.

“I’m fine, Listy. I’ve never felt better.”

* * *

The morning passed easily enough. Fixing a few malfunctioning vending machines was nothing compared to trying to patch Starbug together with little more than paperclips and duct tape.

Lister clicked, and tapped, and hummed, but Rimmer found he couldn’t be bothered to reprimand him. Lister could strip off in the drive room, cover himself in stolen curry sauce and impersonate the Captain, and Rimmer still wouldn’t report him. He was too busy using his master key to sample any advertised offering which sounded vaguely edible. He had never let himself indulge in sweets much before the accident.

“You’re like a new man this morning,” Lister said when he made the executive decision to go to break rather than finish off the AM task list. It was only a request from Todhunter; he hoped the man ordered his coffee and choked on the chicken soup the vending machine was producing.

Lister kept glancing at him, curious, all the way to the canteen and, to Rimmer’s surprise, chose to sit beside him instead of disappearing to swap putrid jokes and nicotine with Petersen and the other kitchen staff.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in such a good mood,” Lister told him, around his customary lunchtime vindaloo.

“So would you be,” Rimmer said dismissively, daringly allowing his main and his side of rice to mix together on his plate. He wasn’t the biggest smeghead who had ever lived. He had never cowered in the presence of his self-loathing monster, or spent over five centuries being tormented by his own clones. It felt amazing.

A sudden pang hit him. The memory of Lister’s anxious face and Kryten’s terror back aboard Starbug. What if that had been reality? He couldn’t help but ask, “Lister, does the name Kryten mean anything to you?”

“Is that one of your Risk buddies? You know I can’t keep up with those losers. No offence, guy.”

Rimmer glared but didn’t pass comment. Instead he went on, “How about Cat? Have you ever owned a cat?”

Lister frowned. “No. You wouldn’t let me have that one on Titan. Even though his little face was so adorable.”

Lister pulled a face that was clearly meant to evoke the same kind of reaction. He looked ridiculous.

Rimmer laughed, scarcely knowing what to do with himself. He wanted to hug Lister. Wanted to turn cartwheels around the canteen. His incompetence hadn’t murdered over a thousand people. He wasn’t a total, utter failure.

He was in heaven.

* * *

Later, alone in the bunk room, he went through his things. He found his diaries, including the embarrassing ones he had had the skutters flush through an airlock before Lister had been released from stasis. His stamp albums were in pristine condition, as was the camphor wood chest his father had given him, and Napoleon’s Armée du Nord.

His books were all in tact, from Lolita to Biggles, along with the bundle of letters from his mother, lamenting how much of a disappointment he was, especially when compared to his brothers. He was tearing them into shreds as Lister entered, his eyes widening.

“Rimmer, what are you doing?”

“I divorced my parents at 14, Lister. Who cares what they think of me? I don’t.”

He felt strange, slightly hysterical, but it gave him a deep sense satisfaction to watch the pieces flutter down into the bin. He didn’t know why he hadn’t done it sooner. His mother was hardly likely to notice if he stopped replying. She probably hadn’t realised he was dead until some acquaintance commented how disgraceful it was that he had stopped sending Christmas cards.

“You sure you don’t want to come out with us tonight?” Lister asked, as though he would have actually been invited in the first place. For a moment he was even tempted. He shook his head.

“Biggles and I will be just dandy.”

With Lister gone he settled down on his bunk to read. But it had been a long, weird day, and he was only three chapters in when he fell asleep, exhausted.

His dream - nightmare - seemed to descend instantly, disorientating. He was on his back, staring up at blown bulbs, unable to move. He wanted to move. He needed to move. Something in the corner of his vision was sparking, and he needed to be sure that Lister was safe. That Lister had survived.

He couldn’t make his lips move, no matter how hard he tried, but somehow the sound must have travelled because suddenly Lister’s voice was saying,

“It’s alright, shhh. I’m here. It’s alright now.”

Rimmer felt a hand on his back, rubbing, and the image faded so that he was back in his bunk, staring at the wall. He twisted over, to prove that he could, and Lister smiled down at him softly.

“You were having a nightmare. You called my name.”

Well, wasn’t that embarrassing. He lowered his eyes, Lister would never let him live it down. Except Lister wasn’t spouting wisecracks. In truth, he didn’t seem even remotely amused by the situation.

“I knew I should have stayed in with you. I reckon it was that beef stew in the canteen yesterday. I said it smelled dodgy.”

“What do you expect with Petersen in charge?” Rimmer offered, the majority of his higher functions preoccupied with the fact that Lister still had his hand on his shoulder.

Lister, for reasons best known to himself, took that as a cue to toe his boots off and settle beside him on the narrow bunk, oblivious to Rimmer’s shock.

“Oi, Petersen’s the best of the lot of them. Have you seen that Tim bloke? I could do a better job than that git,” Lister said viciously, bringing visions of his own pathetic attempt to scupper Lister’s catering exam with Kochanski’s image disc. Except that hadn’t happened, and Lister was pressing a gentle kiss to the corner of his mouth. “But then I’d hardly get to see you, and I wouldn’t like that at all.”

He’d gone space crazy, it was the only possible explanation. Either that or he was still in the throes of his nightmare. There was no way he would be laying there, letting Lister kiss him.

Lister just kissed him again, properly, so that his pulse raced and his skin tingled. Then Lister curled closer, and settled down to sleep, as though the entire scenario was perfectly commonplace. Rimmer lay rigidly for a long time, afraid and aroused, until Lister’s even breathing finally lulled him into his own dreamless sleep.

* * *

It wasn’t right, Rimmer told himself when he woke the following day to find Lister still wrapped around him. It was disgusting, unnatural, and the last thing he would have ever wanted for himself.

But it didn’t feel wrong. It felt like everything he had ever been waiting for.

Lister woke up then and beamed at him. “Morning.”

“It’s more like afternoon,” Rimmer sniffed, glancing at the clock.

“Mmm, good. It ain’t natural to be up early on a Saturday.”

“You don’t get up early any day,” Rimmer countered.

“Hey, I’ve not been late for weeks,” Lister protested, and it was true. Rimmer wasn’t sure why he had even said it. Lister grinned lecherously. “You give me something to get up for. In fact, you’re getting me up right now.”

It was an awful play on words, and the idea of Lister, getting a hard-on in his bed, ought to have been repulsive. It wasn’t though, not by any stretch of the imagination. Lister’s hand found his own burgeoning erection - it had been a long time, he reasoned, it didn’t necessarily mean anything - and he whet his lips as he told him, “Looks like we’re both up then.”

Rimmer didn’t know what to do. He wanted to run. He wanted to do everything. Wanted to touch Lister, taste him, commit every facet of him to memory. But this was wrong, crazy, and then Lister was shrugging out of his clothing, and urging Rimmer’s t-shirt over his head and tugging at his shorts.

Lister wasn’t, he thought frantically. He wouldn’t. This was all some elaborate joke, some dare he’d been tasked with. But Lister’s eyes were dark, smoldering, and Rimmer arched off the bed when Lister put his mouth on him, because no one else had ever so much as offered to do this for him.

He thrashed and whined and whimpered, and Lister held his hips steady and worked his tongue in ways Rimmer had never even imagined possible. His own mouth was no longer under his control, a constant stream of words falling from it,

“Oh God, Lister, Dave, please. Please, _please_.”

He didn’t know what he was begging for, not exactly, but Lister seemed to, taking him deep even as he started to come, so fast he didn’t have chance to offer a warning. Not that Lister seemed bothered, swallowing and lapping until he was so sensitive he almost couldn’t stand it.

“That was,” he tried. “You -”

“Every time we do that it gets hotter,” Lister told him, and Rimmer couldn’t take it, had to know what it was like to perform the same act himself. To perform it on Lister. He had to make the most of the opportunity.

Lister moaned appreciatively, and tangled his fingers in Rimmer’s hair, though he was careful not to pull hard enough to hurt him. Rimmer wouldn’t have minded, not really, lost as he was in Lister’s scent, Lister’s taste, the noises he made when Rimmer used his tongue just so.

“Arnold,” Lister whined when he came, and the sound of his given name on Lister’s lips was almost as exciting as the knowledge it was he who had just given Lister an orgasm.

When it was over they cuddled back together. “I love you, man,” Lister whispered into the juncture of his neck, and Rimmer held him tighter.

He wanted so desperately to believe it.

* * *

Over the next few days it became harder to remember why he had any sense of misgiving about the situation. He read through his most recent diary, sure it must hold the answers. It was exactly the same as he remembered it being, for months and months, until his handwriting was describing an argument they had had, and everything veered off course from the life he had known.

He had been threatening to put Lister on report for snogging Eileen Osoba in a public place. Lister’s excuse was that it had been Christmas, and the mistletoe had been hanging above the pair of them in the canteen, but that didn’t make up for the fact his stomach had still churned at the sight of it. Had made him angry, and restless, and now Lister was going to have to pay for it.

He remembered it all well enough.

But instead of making spurious claims about the reasons for his involvement with the Love Celibacy Society, Lister had interrupted his tirade with a hand on his arm.

“Why can’t you just admit you’re jealous of her?”

He wasn’t jealous. Hadn’t been jealous. But Lister had stepped closer, eyes on his own.

“You don’t need to be. It didn’t mean anything.”

The more he read, the more his own memory seemed distorted. He remembered writing the report, taking it to Todhunter, but he also remembered staring at Lister, shaking with nerves as he found himself saying,

“What if it had been me you bumped into? Would that have meant anything?”

In retaliation Lister had got one of his idiot friends from Y shift to doctor a poster advertising the upcoming Films of Yesteryear festival, proclaiming him to be a 40-year-old virgin. He’d reported Lister again for spreading filthy lies about a superior technician.

He had only recently turned 31 at the time.

But Lister hadn’t done that, had he? He had leaned in and kissed him, not the jokey, over the top snog he’d given Eileen, but a tender press of lips, the fingers of his left hand touching the skin of his cheek, like a scene out of one of the romantic movies Rimmer would never admit to having wasted time watching.

He had kissed Lister back, half convinced he was dreaming. Lister had taken the lead, had shown him things he hadn’t known his body was capable of, and the following morning Rimmer had waved smugly at Kristine Kochanski across the canteen. She was a silly cow not to see what she had had in front of her.

That was the way things had happened. Obviously.

As the days turned into weeks he forgot why he tensed up at the mention of cats or mechanoids, but he remembered the first time Lister told him he loved him, on Valentine’s Day, the scenario so sickly sweet and contrived it should have made him want to retch. It hadn’t, because Lister had changed him. For the first time in his life he barely gave a smeg what other people were saying about him, so long as Lister was looking at him like he was the only thing that mattered in the universe.

He still panicked sometimes, out of nowhere, about dwindling supplies and the state of the drive plate. Lister told him not to be stupid, not when they’d be off the rust bucket at the end of the mission to live on a farm in Fiji with sheep and a cow and three horses. He should have laughed at the suggestion, should have pointed out the myriad flaws in Lister’s master plan. But Lister had clipped pictures from a magazine, so earnest that all he actually said was that they should start saving for a good set of waders and a houseboat.

“It’ll be brutal,” Lister assured him, and Rimmer went out and donated all of his astro-navigation textbooks to the Holographic Rights Movement shop on J Deck.

There wasn’t much call for it out on the marshy plains of Fiji, after all.

* * *

A month into ship’s summer and life was perfect.

At least during waking hours.

As the weeks passed his nightmares had grown ever more frequent, and ever more vivid. He could never move, never interact. He just lay there, helpless, as strangely familiar voices talked incessantly about things he had no understanding of.

“I don’t get it. What’s wrong with goal post head right now?” they said one night.

“It’s Mr Rimmer’s light bee, Sir. I’m afraid that’s the most detailed diagnosis I am able to deliver at this point in time.”

“That’s not what I meant. He can’t move, can’t talk, can’t inflict that nylon monstrosity on my sensitive eyes. What do you keep trying to fix him for!?”

Another night it was, “Perhaps we could try a hard reset, Sir?”

Lister’s voice answered. “No! I just, what if it wipes his memories? What if he isn’t _him_ anymore?”

“Forgive me, Sir, but I’m failing to see how that would be a disadvantage.”

Still another it was Lister’s voice alone.

“Come on, Rimmer. You can’t just weasel your way out of it and lie there forever. Holly brought you back for a reason, remember? You’ve gotta keep me sane. You can’t do that when you keep flickering in and out of existence!”

Then there was silence, blissful and uncomplicated, for a long time before Lister’s voice spoke again.

“Don’t leave me on me own. Please, man. I miss you.”

He woke up from it crying. Lister held him, kissed his temple, and told him that it was only a dream. It wasn’t real. He bought a packet of over the counter Dream-B-Gone from the pharmacy and determined not to let it get to him.

There were more important things to concentrate on, like organising surprise shore leave. It wouldn’t be the proper summer shore leave Rimmer had spent so long being jealous of, not without the bright lights of Titan, or the upmarket spa hotels of Ganymede. But Pluto had its charms, or so the holiday brochures in the medi-bay kept telling him. He had spent more than his fair share of time in there before he and Lister had got together. Somehow he didn’t have chance to worry about all the niggling aches and pains when Lister was around.

He went to the HR department to fill out the necessary forms, the monotony of it soothing in a way little else was. Cecil Dunham, from the Love Celibacy Society, was manning the front desk when he finished and he eyed Rimmer in undisguised disgust as he scanned the request forms.

“You’re going to regret it.”

“Pardon,” Rimmer said, suspicious.

“You and Lister. The longer you let it go on, the worse it’s going to hurt when reality hits you both on the head and he goes running back to Kochanski.”

“You don’t know what you’re drivelling about,” Rimmer argued, though the words stirred up all his worst fears and insecurities. Lister hadn’t so much as mentioned her name in months, he wouldn’t leave him for Kochanski. Surely?

“You keep telling yourself that,” Cecil said calmly, and dropped the forms into the appropriate tray with an air of finality.

He stormed back to his - their - quarters feeling angry and unsettled. It was all Dunham’s fault. The man was just jealous because he, Arnold Judas Rimmer, no longer had to spend his Tuesday evenings pretending he wasn’t pathetically desperate for someone, anyone, to look at him and think him worthy of closer attention.

Lister was there when he got back, but he was dressed strangely and looked older, tired. He was slumped on Rimmer’s bunk with his face in his hands and though Rimmer wanted to go and comfort him, something held him back. Fear perhaps that Lister was about to announce he preferred Kochanski after all.

Instead Lister looked up, expression full of incredulous hope.

“Rimmer, can you see me?”

“Of course I can see you,” he answered snappishly. “Don’t be such a gimboid.”

Lister acted as though he hadn’t spoken, inching closer.

“You can, can’t you? You’ve got to fight it. You’ve got to come back to me.”

“I’m here,” Rimmer said, but it came out as a whisper. His head was throbbing suddenly, burning like there was static dancing along his synapses. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Fight it,” Lister said again, more urgently. “You’ve got to fight it!”

The pain flared out across his temples, so intense it left him panting, and when he looked up Lister looked his usual self. He was still dressed in what passed for his uniform, no grubby leather in sight.

“Lie down,” Lister soothed, stroking his forehead lightly once he lay on the bunk.

“It must be those tablets,” he offered and Lister hmmed in agreement.

“Never mind, just let me look after you.”

* * *

“You wouldn’t - ” he hesitated as he and Lister sat eating lunch together a few days later. He didn’t know how to word it, didn’t know why he couldn’t shake the thought in the first place. Dunham was the closest thing he had had to a friend before Lister, and it wasn’t sporting that he should cause him all this anxiety. When he glanced up Lister was watching him, expectantly, so he asked in a rush, “You’re not still hung up on Kochanski, are you?”

Lister laughed. “Where did that come from?”

Rimmer blushed. “Nowhere, I was just talking to Cecil and -”

“I dunno why you ever hung around with those LCS jerks.”

His response was the kind of thing that only ever ought to be uttered inside his own head. But these days he didn’t have such tight control over what came out of his mouth. Lister said he was learning not to over think everything.

“I didn’t have you,” he said simply.

Lister kissed him in response, right there in the middle of the canteen, and everything was so perfect he forgot about Kochanski, and the headaches, and the horrid dream he had had on finally falling asleep the night before, in which Lister had held his unresponsive hand and told him over and over that time was running out, and that if he didn’t fight it they would never see each other again.

None of that mattered, and the proof came when the day only got better. Todhunter stopped him en route to sort out a problem in the botanical gardens to tell him his request for couples’ shore leave had been granted.

“It’ll do you good,” Todhunter said. “You’ve been looking peaky, Rimmer.”

Rimmer saluted him, the salute he had formulated himself, and was only slightly irritated that he could no longer class the man amongst the smeggiest of the ship’s top ranking smegheads.

Later, when he was busy kissing Lister senseless to stop himself from blurting out the surprise, Lister put a hand on his chest to still him, face taut with nerves as he asked him,

“You weren’t trying to tell me anything earlier, were you? You’re not bored of me and wish I’d go find someone else?”

“Of course not,” Rimmer sputtered, the idea of it so utterly ludicrous. “You know how much I love you.” He still felt ridiculously vulnerable saying the words, but it was getting easier. And Lister obviously needed to hear them.

Lister smiled at him, soft and tender, and they went back to kissing like their lives depended on it.

Let that, Rimmer thought, be an end to the nonsense.

* * *

Except it wasn’t. Because now the idea was in his head, he couldn’t quite stop worrying about it. He hawkishly monitored the way Lister interacted with any woman he came into contact with, and any man, for that matter, and tortured himself with imagined images of the two of them together. To make matters worse the headaches had become a regular occurrence, springing on him at random moments, and once even reducing him to his knees in the middle of a busy main corridor.

The Medi-Bot looked him over, but said there was nothing obviously wrong with him, and that it was probably stress. It was the poorly programmed goit’s answer to everything, or at least it had been when Rimmer was still a regular visitor. He was prescribed a packet of pills and discharged to finish the rest of his maintenance shift.

He had scarcely caught up with Lister when he was accosted by yet another headache, this one so bad he could scarcely stand, scarcely see. Lister was at his side in a moment, to half drag, half carry him back to their bunk room.

He was dimly aware of Lister laying him on his bunk, of Lister’s fingers, cool against his temples, but most of his awareness was trapped inside his own head. Strange images flashed into his mind unbidden - cats, hundreds of them, clawing at him, suffocating him. A robotic arm, like the one he had once seen on a droid prototype at the Io science exposition, attempting to jab his eyes out.

Lister was there too, in his head. Telling him he loved him and then laughing, and kissing Kochanski passionately though he knew Rimmer was stood in the doorway, watching.

“My poor Arnold,” the Lister not busy breaking his heart said, laying a cool cloth over his forehead because it was so hot. Hotter than any other ship’s summer Rimmer could remember. “You worry too much. You mustn’t worry about anything now because I’m here, and I only want to look after you.”

He reached for Lister’s hand, grateful for the attention, when another splitting pain tore through his skull. Because Lister was yelling, too close and yet distant,

“He moved his hand! Kryten! _Kryten!!_ ”

There was another voice but it wasn’t making words, just garbled noises.

“Rimmer,” Lister said, crushing his hand so tightly it hurt. “I know you can do it.”

Then it was gone and Lister - his Lister, the real Lister - was peering into his eyes in concern.

“I think I should go back to the medi-bay,” Rimmer managed, his voice sounding weak and reedy.

“It’s alright,” Lister told him, touching his lips to Rimmer’s. “You just need some sleep, that’s all.”

Lister was right. He had to be.

* * *

The day of his long awaited shore leave finally dawned, and Rimmer spent a few moments on waking just looking up at the bottom of Lister’s bunk and beaming to himself.

A few days away with Lister would sort him out, he was sure of it. He just needed a break away from the stifling heat of Red Dwarf - surely no summer had ever lasted this long. It was usually all but over by the end of Geldof.

And he needed a respite from all the memories the ship offered of his past failures. The time he had written ‘I am a fish’ 400 times on his Astro-nav exam paper, and the time he had sent back his gazpacho soup to be warmed up in front of the Captain. ...But he had never been invited to dine at the Captain’s table, not once in all the 13 years he had served with the JMC.

The sooner they left for Pluto, the better.

“We’re gonna be late,” Lister mumbled sleepily, his breath tickling Rimmer’s collar bone.

“We’re not going to work today,” he said in turn, feeling immeasurably pleased with himself.

Lister raised himself up on his elbow to look down at him, shocked. Rimmer couldn’t keep it a secret a moment longer.

“I’ve got us a place on the shuttle to Pluto. It leaves at 11.”

“Pluto?”

The uncertainty washed over him so quickly it was disorientating. He could feel his cheeks flame with embarrassment. Of course Lister wasn’t going to want to go to Pluto. Nobody wanted to go to Pluto. That was the reason his late application had been accepted.

Except Lister was crushing him close and kissing him. “Brutal. Can we go see the penguins on Kerberos?”

It was a sign of his overwhelming relief that he nodded, slightly too frantic, and said,

“Of course. Anything you want, Lister.”

He didn’t have much to pack, and Lister generally travelled light. Rimmer didn’t make a fuss, there wasn’t going to be any great expectation to look smart while wandering around a smegging penguin sanctuary. Still, if it made Lister happy...

That was what he was thinking as he made his way down the corridor towards the landing bay. What he was thinking as his vision blurred, the sounds of the ship slowing and distorting, as though his head were underwater. He was having a stroke, he thought desperately, or a heart attack. Else he was losing his mind entirely.

He shook his head, tried to clear it, but everything was still hopelessly blurred. He turned, expecting more of the same, but instead of a grey haze there was blinding white. He blinked and it settled into a picture that reminded him of the medi-bay, white washed walls and posters about fibre intake.

Lister was stood in the middle of it, wearing the leather jacket he wore in Rimmer’s moments of madness, not the Hawaiian shirt he had just seen him put on. He looked tired, dishevelled, _frightened_.

But he heard Lister’s voice behind him, and turned back towards the landing bay.

“Rimmer, are you alright? Come on, man, Pluto’s waiting.” He was smiling, beautiful.

Rimmer looked down at his own hands, needing something to focus on. It was like they were flickering between solid and static and, though his pulse was hammering, his heart felt like it was humming. Spinning. Perhaps he really was having a heart attack.

“Come here,” Lister said, expression mischievous. Let me show you how grateful I am to you for organising this. Let me look after you.”

He took a step towards him, because it was what made sense. Lister always looked after him. As he did so his own name echoed in the corridor, and he twisted again to look at the other Lister. The Lister who came to him in his dreams and begged him over and over again not to leave him.

“Don’t do this to me,” he said, frantic. “Not when you’ve come this far.”

Rimmer wavered, couldn’t decide what to do, not with the headache back, blinding in its intensity.

“You need to lie down,” Lister, his Lister, said. “You need me to take care of you.”

He really did. His mind was made up - 

"Rimmer, this can’t be it!” The other Lister cried. “You can’t go. I don’t want you to go.” The last ended on a sob and Rimmer couldn’t take it, couldn’t bear the thought of Lister being so upset, not over him. Today was supposed to be about making Lister happy.

He took an unsteady step towards him, and then another, and another. Each one made him more certain. This was what he was supposed to be doing. He didn’t know why, but it was. That much was beyond question.

His vision was growing clearer, though the pain in his head worsened, and when he was almost there he held his hand out to Lister, fascinated by the way it shook and trembled. Lister took it and hauled him forward the last few paces and into a bone crushing hug.

“You did it,” he said, voice thick with emotion. “You really did it.”

And that was about the moment everything went black. Again.

* * *

When he opened his eyes the first thing he saw was Lister. Again. But this time there was no Rastabilly Skank, and no sign of his astro-navigation timetable. Lister was hunched up in a chair, looking haggard and exhausted. His thumb was resting near his chin, as though it was too much effort to get it to his mouth.

Rimmer tried to sit up, quietly, but even that small movement was enough to jerk Lister into awareness.

“You’re awake!”

“I’m awake,” Rimmer echoed, gaze taking in his surroundings with a sinking feel. He remembered now. The storm, the power outage, Kryten’s panic and Lister’s grim expression.

Lister confirmed it for him,

“It knocked the power out, it was touch and go for a bit. The Cat took a bash to the head and,” a hint of a smile infused his tone, “a tear to his third favourite jacket. Kryten was running backwards for three days. You.” He choked, tried again. “You seemed broken. You were nothing but static for almost two weeks, I thought you were a goner.”

Rimmer took it in silently. None of what he had experienced the last six weeks - or God knows how long, really - had happened. He had killed 1,167 people. He had demanded the kitchen staff reheat his gazpacho soup.

Lister had never chosen him over Kochanski.

“It was a virus,” Lister said, to fill the silence. “Kryten wanted to reset you but I wouldn’t let him. I knew you could fight it off.”

Fight it off. That was what Lister had spent weeks telling him to do over and over again, right before another Lister, a Lister who didn’t hate his guts, held him and petted him and tried to make him forget all about the strange disjointed nightmares.

He bit back the sudden, horrific urge to burst into tears.

 _That_ had been the real nightmare. He had been willingly swapping spit with Lister. He had turned his back on the Love Celibates. He had even given away his astro-navigation textbooks and his dreams of becoming an officer, all to daydream about living out the rest of his days in a half submerged shack on Fiji!

“Kryten said it was creating a world in your head you wouldn’t want to leave. It must have been brutal, you resisted everything.”

The humour in Lister’s voice was forced, false, and Rimmer didn’t feel confident enough in his ability to keep his upper lip stiffened to meet his gaze.

“What was it? Risk all day and hammond organ music all night?”

Rimmer sunk back onto the medi-bed, and shut his eyes to hide the swirl of emotion.

“It doesn’t matter now, Lister, does it?”

* * *

After Kryten had duly fussed over his medi-scan readouts, and the Cat had stopped by to complain about his rejoining the land of the (almost) living, Rimmer was finally free to seek the sanctuary of his own cramped quarters.

Lister trailed along beside him, as though he couldn’t quite believe Rimmer wasn’t about to relapse and prove his Florence Nightingale routine had all been for nothing.

“Everything was in a mess,” Lister said, to plaster over the obvious awkwardness. “Because of the way we was thrown about. I tried to put your things back in the right place though.”

A tirade about Lister touching his possessions was on the tip of his tongue. A series of put downs designed to remind Lister why he wasn’t allowed in his room, ever, near death scenario or no near death scenario. But when he opened his mouth to start it all seemed too much effort. What did it matter if Lister had mixed up his Risk strategy referencing system? Even he couldn’t bring himself to care about it.

“It’s not like I don’t have eternity to sort it out,” Rimmer said instead, and wished suddenly, desperately, that Lister would go away and leave him alone.

Thankfully Starbug was far from the largest scouting vessel in the JMC line-up, and within moments they were stood at the door to his room. _Kochanski’s room_ , as he imagined Lister was thinking.

“Rimmer - “ Lister said at the last possible moment before the door slid closed, and Rimmer halted it, doing his best not to look expectant. Lister gazed at his shoulder, scuffed the toe of his boot into the floor. “I just wanted to say, it's good to have you back. It wasn’t the same without you.”

“Yet I’m sure you managed just fine.”

The door slid shut before Lister had chance to respond, and Rimmer dropped down onto his bunk, ignoring the way the pipes nurieeked and rottuted in protest. Lister had replaced his books purely in size order, rather than colour, width, and chronology, but it was better than he had expected. He must have taken his time about it too, Rimmer thought, reaching for a distraction, the whole room smelt of him.

It wasn’t much of a distraction, that realisation, more of a reminder. A reminder of how perfect his life had been - He corrected himself, how perfect _he had thought_ his life had been just that morning. He had been, crazed nightmares and debilitating headaches aside, happy, contented. Loved. He slammed a fist against the nearest pipe, getting nothing but a dull ache and a loud ‘hernunger’ in response.

It hadn’t been perfect at all. A virus had been attempting to leech away every last watt of his electrical energy before burning out his light bee.

He had been ill. Sick in the head. Off his proverbial rocker.

By the end of the week everything would be completely back to normal.

* * *

By the end of the week everything was completely back to normal.

At least on the surface of it.

He insulted the Cat, and argued with Kryten, and had returned all of his possessions to their proper places, bar one hopelessly crushed music cassette and his Javanese camphor-wood chest which had apparently disappeared. The guitar shaped hole in the back hadn’t done much for its structural integrity, and Rimmer assumed it had finally fallen apart during the storm created turbulence.

Lister was as irritating as he’d ever been, and the pair of them bickered in the cockpit and the rec area, though it felt more for show than the result of any real bitterness. When it was just the two of them, when Rimmer hadn’t been able to get away quickly enough, they sat in silence, he lost in the (false) memory of Lister’s embrace, and Lister. Who knew why Lister was so quiet. Indigestion, probably.

He found himself in such a situation that Saturday, Lister twisting and turning in his swivel chair as Rimmer stared at the console in front of him. They had done a passable job of the repairs, he had been grudgingly forced to admit, even if one of his control switches had been replaced with a makeshift pull cord fashioned from a couple of paperclips.

“Don’t you think it would help to talk about it?” Lister asked suddenly, apparently from nowhere, and Rimmer cursed the shift rota. “You almost died back there.”

“I’m already dead, or has it escaped your notice? It’s that whole lack of a respiratory system, the losing the ability to touch anything every time that goited faulty microwave in the galley is switched on. I’m not real, Lister. It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

“Can you even hear yourself?” Lister demanded. “Is this the same Rimmer who wouldn’t let me have ten smegging minutes with Kochanski’s personality disc for fear I wouldn’t switch him back on again? The Rimmer who left us to face down that mad simulant to save his own skin?”

“That’s it,” Rimmer shot back, temper rising. “Drag it all up, Lister. Go on, tell me what a smeghead I am. Tell me how you should have just switched me off when you had the chance. Come on, what are you waiting for?”

Lister was on his feet now, shaking his head in frustration.

“You don’t get it, do you? Sitting there, helpless, waiting for you to wake-up, it was the worst time of my whole life. Worse than finding out I’m the last human in the universe. Worse than watching you jet off to go and be a space hero. And you don’t even care. You just sit there, and mope, and sigh, and act like you wish I’d just let it finish you!”

They both seemed shocked by Lister’s outburst, and Lister sucked in a ragged breath before continuing, more or less at his usual speaking volume,

“I know it’s not perfect, it’s not the life any of us would have chosen. But it’s what we’ve got, Rimmer. It’s real, and it’s happening, and you were the one who made me see that. Why can’t you see it yourself?”

Rimmer just stood there for a long moment, jaw working though no sound proved forthcoming. And then the Cat was yowling and winding his way past Lister, hand mirror out, and Rimmer didn’t hang about.

He always had been a coward.

* * *

It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes later when Lister knocked at the door to his room. He knew it was Lister because the man accompanied the knock with,

“Open the door or I’ll have no choice but to practice guitar. I’ve got nothing else to do all evening.”

Lister could really be a grade A git when he wanted to.

The door slid open to reveal Lister and what looked like, but couldn’t be -

“I fixed your trunk. At least,” Lister shrugged sheepishly. “I tried to fix it.”

There was a lot more duct tape than he remembered, but the fact that Lister had bothered at all made his simulated heart twist in his simulated chest. For a moment it was too easy to believe himself back aboard Red Dwarf, beaming gormlessly up at Lister, right before he confessed all his deepest, darkest secrets about how this was what he wanted. What he had always wanted.

He wished he could forget about it all as thoroughly as the virus had quashed his sense of reality, because it was so uncomfortably true. Perhaps he hadn't always realised it, but Lister had always been what he'd wanted.

Lister took his continued silence as permission to sit down, so close their shoulders were almost touching.

“I’m sorry,” Rimmer said eventually, the words unfamiliar in his mouth. Lister looked at him, gaze deep and dark and full of emotion Rimmer didn’t know how to interpret.

“This might not be exactly where you want to be,” Lister said. “But I’m glad you’re here.

“Lister, you’d be glad for anyone so long as their presence meant you never had to organise a shift rota that interrupted your daily slob before 2pm.”

That was what he had meant to say, what he had opened his mouth to say. What actually came out was,

“I was back on Red Dwarf. The accident never happened. We were going to go on shore leave to Pluto and visit the penguin sanctuary.”

“It doesn’t sound like your idea of paradise,” Lister said, too knowingly.

“It wasn’t. Isn’t. You wanted to see it and I -” Rimmer paused, looked anywhere but at Lister. He hadn’t felt this terrified since his first real mission as Ace, and he hadn’t recovered from that for a fortnight. “I just wanted you to be happy.”

There it was, the truth laid bare between them. Lister said nothing, absolutely nothing as the seconds ticked resolutely by, and Rimmer braced himself for the inevitable rejection. It was one of the worst feelings he had ever known. Worse than the time his parents had actually been present at the school prize evening choral recital, and his voice had cracked during his solo piece. Worse even than having Yvonne McGruder pat his hand after all of 12 nanoseconds and say,

‘Never mind, there’s always next time, Norman.’

He was so caught up in bracing himself that he jumped when Lister touched his hand, warm fingers sliding against his own in a touch that was at once familiar and entirely alien.

“Sometimes I thought you could see me, in the medi-bay. Other times I was sure you couldn’t see anything at all. I kept talking to you though. I told you things I’ve never told anyone.”

“I couldn’t hear them,” Rimmer said and, then, afraid that sounded dismissive, added, “but I want to. If you want to tell me. I could see you sometimes, and I heard you tell me I had to fight it. I thought I was going space-crazy.”

Lister’s grip on his hand tightened, just slightly, and it dawned on Rimmer that he could turn to look at him. That perhaps he really ought to. Lister smiled at him, soft and open.

“You’re already space-crazy, Rimmer, you know that.”

Rimmer opened his mouth to protest, because Mr Flibble had been a one time only occurrence, but Lister only raised the fingers of his free hand to touch Rimmer’s cheek, just as he had in Rimmer’s implanted memories. He held his breath, didn’t dare to hope, and then Lister was speaking,

“But I love you anyway.”

Rimmer kissed him then, over and over again. Because Lister had been wrong.

He was _exactly_ where he wanted to be.

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, feel free to chat / hit me with prompts over on Tumblr [@serenwib](http://serenwib.tumblr.com/) or Twitter [@falsteloj](https://twitter.com/falsteloj). :)


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